David's Blog: Song Ji Eun - 희망고문 (False Hope/Torturous Hope/Hope Torture) MV Review

Besides BoA, Song Ji Eun of the Korean group, Secret, helped immerse me into the world of Kpop. In May last year, I happened to stumble across "It's Cold", an OST track for the drama Take Care of Us, Captain. I was amazed by the clarity Song Ji Eun had in terms of her vocal abilities. Due to that clarity, I dubbed her as the Mozart of the Kpop scene. True, I don't have a vast knowledge of all the singers in the business, but I have to argue that her voice is one of the clearest ones that I ever heard in a long time.

I just found out literally last week that Song Ji Eun was to release her first mini album, featuring three songs in which one of the songs had parts of it composed and lyrics written by Ji Eun herself. For the purpose of this review, I will focus on just her title track, which I'm not quite sure of the exact title so I'll stick with the term I first heard: Torturous Hope.

Once again, this is not a professional review. This review reflects my opinions and you're free to disagree with it in anyways that suit your needs. This time however, I'll try to integrate the music and the video into one to save on time it takes to write this blog post.

WARNING: I forgot to mention it on my blogpost yesterday, but this Music Video (MV) is rated 19+ due to some disturbing scenes. Viewer discretion is advised. For my own screen caps, I will not include pictures of these scenes, but I may make reference to it during the discussion of the music video.

Review and Thoughts
First of all, I have to say that the style of the MV from the teaser I saw didn't coincide with my expectations of Song Ji Eun or Secret. From my experiences, their MVs tend to be cutesy or sexy, but never overly complex to understand. From the teaser, I knew that this MV would be different for it looked dark and had images of minor body mutilation on Ji Eun's hand. Also, this video is filled with imagery that I cannot begin to hope to be able to interpret the intention of each scenes.

The slow-mid tempo R&B piece complements well with the mostly dark themed music video. The massive use of scene changes, from scenes of Ji Eun by herself, to those with, what I assume is her ex-boyfriend, really keeps the song going. At times, it made it difficult for me to keep track of where I am in terms of the song because I become so fixated to the intense images.

In a recent interview, Song Ji Eun stated: "It is said that guys tend to give false hope to girls after a breakup. So the title became False Hope. There are many guys who give false hope to girls even if they don't really like her. The lyrics talk about that kind of story." Message received. Despite not understanding a word of Korean, I could get that message from the video.

The constant usage of monotone and cool blue tones helped, I believe, bring out attention to the sadness that comes from a breakup. It's furthered supported by having Song Ji Eun and her ex having a long nail pierced into their hand; perhaps to illustrate a love turned to becoming a burden, especially to the girl. It is like Ji Eun has this "false hope" of being able to rekindle a 5relationship that have became unrequited. On the other hand, there were warmer scenes. I want to say that this represented more about the anger that comes from a break up (for we see her tear a cake apart when they used this filter [if that's the right word to use]), but I cannot say for sure. Perhaps it could be her own personal anger, for not being able to let go? However, the contrast between the sad and "angry" scenes convey the multiple emotions of the theme well.

There were two scenes that really caught my eye. The first one includes the monotone scenes with the red pomegranate. As simple as it is, it's purely ingenious in my opinion. The imagery of blood plays figuratively, and literally to an extent, to help strengthen the theme. Second, the scene where Ji Eun sits within a thorn bush. Well done in terms of conveying the feeling of despair and hopelessness of being trapped in this relationship. I believe it makes reference to the rose tattoo on the ex's arms.

Looking at this as a whole, I find the music video for Torturous Hope to be a wonderful contrast between the clarity of Song Ji Eun's voice and the complexity of the video. I feel that it is consistent with the mixed emotions that comes from a breakup that has one party with lingering feelings. And thus, this is the torture. To be a prisoner of one's own feelings. In conclusion, it's an amazing piece of art, and something really unexpected from Secret's main vocalist.

Screen caps
In the same interview, Song Ji Eun stated that she had to wear 12 different outfits for the shoot! I went through the music video and took screen caps of the 12 different outfits, or what I thought were the 12 different outfits.

I took them in order of appearance, so they may not all be the most pleasing shots of Song Ji Eun. And since I'm not really in tune with fashion, I have came up with my own names for the outfits. =P (I feel like those Asian restaurants with funny English names for their dishes)